"This is what I call being real comfortable and cozy," she remarked to Fred as they disposed themselves on one of the lower steps.
Below and near at hand were most of the members of her family. She saw from the countenances of the three aunts that they were displeased with her, but the consciousness of this did not spoil life for her. She humanly enjoyed their discomfiture, knowing that it was based upon the dinginess of Fred's clothes and prospects. Their new broad tolerance of the Holtons did not cover the tragic implications of Fred's raiment. They meant to protect Phil in every way, and yet there was ground for despair when she chose the most undesirable young man in the county to sit with in the intimacy of the refreshment hour at her own coming-out. Mrs. Fosdick leaned back from her table to ask Amzi in an angry whisper what he meant by allowing Phil to invite Fred Holton to her party.
"What's that? Allow her! I didn't allow her! Nobody allows Phil! Thunder!" And then, after he had picked up his fallen napkin, he turned to add: "There's nothing the matter with Fred that I know of!"
The comparative quiet that now reigned was much more to Fred's liking than the gayety of the dance. Phil treated their companionship as a matter of course and his timidity and restraint vanished. Nothing in his experience had ever been so agreeable and stimulating as this. That Phil, of all humankind, should have made this possible was to him inexplicable. It could not be that when this was over, he should be hurled back to Stop 7.
Phil, who had disposed of Charles's confession of adoration to her own satisfaction, now seemed bent upon winning some praise from the halting tongue of Charles's brother. To make conversation she directed attention to her new trinket, holding out the chain for Fred to admire the pearls. In doing this he saw the pulse throbbing in her slim throat, and this in itself was disturbing. Her nearness there on the stairway affected him even more than on the orchard slope where he had experienced similar agitations. When she laughed he noticed an irregularity in one of her white teeth; and there was a tiny mole on her neck, just below her left ear. He did not know why he saw these things, or why seeing them increased his awe. It seemed wonderful that she could so easily slip her hands out of her gloves without drawing the long gauntlets from her arms. Farther and farther receded the Phil of the kitchen apron with whom he had bargained for the sale of the saddest apples that had ever been brought to Montgomery by a self-respecting farmer! When her father came to the stair-rail to ask if she felt a draft from the upper windows, Fred was shaken with fear; the thought that the airs of heaven might visit affliction upon this brown-haired and brown-eyed marvel was at once a grief to him. He felt the world rock at the bare thought of any harm ever coming to her.
"As if," said Phil, when her father had been reassured, "the likes of me could take cold. What do you do all day on a farm in winter weather?"
"Let me see; I chopped wood, this morning; and I'd bought some corn of Perry—that is, of your uncle—and went over with the wagon to get it; and this afternoon I brought the wood I had chopped to the woodshed; and then I went out to look at my wheatfield, and almost bought a cow of another neighbor—but didn't quite make a bargain. And then I began to get ready to come to your party."
"You must have worked awfully hard to get ready," said Phil, "for you were late getting here."
"Well, I loafed around outside for an hour or so before I came in," and he smiled ruefully. "I'm not used to parties."